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Friday, August 7, 2009

The Yiddish Alphabet, as sung by Spider-Man

I have no idea what's going on here. But a secular Israeli in a Spider-Man outfit and a shtreimel -- who seems to be accompanied by a giant llama and the Village People -- singing the Yiddish alphabet...well, you can't not watch it.



As far as I can tell, Gimel stands for a fat goy. Vov is a vildechaya, which is one of my favorite books, and an English expression ("Wild Thing") that comes from the Yiddish slang for wild children. Zayin is a shotgun. One letter stands for getting punched in the face, but I can't tell which. And I'm pretty sure lox, bagels and beer made cameos.

One could try to deeply analyze this video for hidden messages and for subliminal attitudes of secular Israelis toward religious Israelis (or "dosim," which is what Dalet stood for.) But really, my instinct (as someone who isn't Israeli, but has spent a bunch of time there) is to chalk it up to a combination of making fun of the Orthodox, making fun of themselves, and a healthy amount of totally random imagery of hedonism and violence. What do you think?

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

G-dcast: Spooky Moses

It's hard to top a beatbox harmonica Shema, but the first 3 seconds of Ekev really do it. Just the post-bris expression is what my 10-year-old cousin likes to anthropomorphize as an "OMG moment."







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